Spring Has Sprung

You know I love to take pictures of the flora and fauna around our house...

These first few pictures are of the holly bushes by our front steps. How long have I lived here? I never remember them flowering this way, but the bees were going crazy so I looked more closely and had a beautiful surprise. Have they flowered this way every spring? Surely.

This is the picture I used for my blog background above. Can you see the pollen dusting the leaves? The pollen is particularly heavy this year.

The forsythia flowers are actually on their way out.

Last weekend the azalea bushes looked about to explode with flowers. This bush shows four early bloomers, but further down you'll see pictures taken three days later. BOOM!

If you enlarge this picture you can better see the pollen coating the blossoms.

Redbud tree.

Redbud blossoms.

Look at the baby leaves!

The apple tree blossoms are so pretty.

I worry so much about the declining butterfly populations so it does my heart good to see them in our yard.

We have several large beds of periwinkle groundcover.

Two little shy girls hiding in the leaves.

So simple, so beautiful.

As I'm coming back into the house I notice Obi in the sunroom.

He loves to stay in here and look out all day.

This picture was taken three days later. See how many more of the azaleas have bloomed.

This is actually Chappu on the other side.

More azaleas of a different hue. Even the leaves are a different hue, more of a blue-ish green than the true green of the azalea bushes above.

Not to be outdone by the flowers these maple tree 'helicopters' are beautiful in their own way.

Mystery blossom -- do you know what it is?

Today it finally rained a bit. All the pollen that was dusting every surface just glopped up into yellow puddles and yellow clumps. It's supposed to rain more tonight so hopefully it will all wash away.

Our yellow-dusted deck rail.

On NPR this morning they said the usual high point for pollen in this area is 1800 granules per unit measure. Yesterday they measured it at 9000 granules per unit measure. Local 'experts' have suggested that the large volume of pollen this year is due to the fact that we had such a relatively cold winter with such an abrupt and sudden heat spell. Temps the last two days were over 90 degrees with high 80s before that, perhaps fooling all the trees to throw out their pollen when normally different species release it at different points throughout the spring. I'm just ready for it to be gone! I've had to use my windshield wipers to clear my car window each morning as if it had been dusted with a light flurry of snow during the night.